Posted on 12/07/2006 1:56:26 PM PST by kronos77
LONDON (Reuters) - Huddled against the December chill, the wife and young son of Alexander Litvinenko led a small crowd of mourners on Thursday at a private London funeral while confusion surrounded his deathbed conversion to Islam.
Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky and separatist Chechen leader Akhmed Zakayev, two of the Kremlin's most outspoken exiled critics, were among the six pallbearers who lowered Litvinenko into his grave at Highgate cemetery in north London.
He was laid to rest two weeks after dying from radiation poisoning in a case that has revived echoes of the Cold War and raised tensions between London and Moscow.
CONVERSION CONTROVERSY
But there was controversy to the very end over Litvinenko's reported conversion to Islam shortly before his death.
"He asked to be buried in accordance with Muslim traditions and customs," Chechen rebel Zakayev, himself a Muslim, told Reuters on the eve of the funeral.
He said Litvinenko was disillusioned with the Russian Orthodox Church because, as a former security agent, he had seen how some priests collaborated with the KGB secret police by passing on details of churchgoers' confessions.
But another friend of Litvinenko, Alexander Goldfarb, said he had "strong reservations" about the deathbed conversion and that the graveside Muslim prayers were against the wishes of the dead man's widow, Marina.
"It was supposed to be a non-religious, non-denominational ceremony according to the wishes of the widow," Goldfarb said, adding that Marina had allowed the rites to go ahead to avoid an "unseemly situation".
Earlier, some of the mourners attended noon prayers at London's central mosque.
"Thank you to my son's brothers in faith that they remember him and pray for him," Walter Litvinenko said.
(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.co.uk ...
ping!
You don't think, in his slighly altered condition due to the amount of pain-killers he would have been on, he started believing that crap about the 72 rooms with 72 virgins in each one.
As an aside, what do Muslim women get when they get to heaven, if they are allowed there? do they get 5,000 virgin males?
Actually Iw allways asked myself who are those 72 virgines?
:)
In th eother hand Muslim+radioactive material+dying as matryr...
argggghhh...
Litvinenko to be buried in London's Muslim cemetery
London, 14:41
The former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko will be buried later today at Muslim cemetery in London.
Litvinenko's father Walter confirmed that the funeral will take place on Thursday, adding that his son converted to Islam before his death and was given the Muslim equivalent of the last rites in London's hospital.
The funeral will be attended by family members and close associates. He will be buried in a sealed coffin to guard against any traces still in his body of the deadly polonium-210 radioactive isotope.
British authorities said Wednesday they are now treating the fatal poisoning case as a murder investigation. /end/
http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/agencija/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=2&NrArticle=46725&NrIssue=213&NrSection=30
After watching this guy croak, I'm asking why he didn't simply write a suicide note. Ah, terrorists like proof of what they're buying and they like to view any counter attacks or methods of recovering the stuff. I suspect an attack on Russia very soon.
Reuters sucks.
Don't bet on Russia as the target.
I want to know whether there is evidence of beryllium at the sites contaminated with polonium in this incident. Triggers for 'suit case' nukes use a combination of polonium and beryllium. This might have been a smuggling plot connected with an Al Qaeda/Chechen project to reactivate an old stolen or black-market Soviet suit-case bomb. There is not point in smuggling the trigger out of Russia if Russia is the target.
Muslim women get the shaft all the way around (no pun intended). They get to be the "head virgin".
I'd like to think that they get to lead their former jihadi jerkoff husbands around by the nose. But, that's assuming their idiot suicidal husbands made it to heaven.
From Putin's FSB or the Sunni Extremists ? Russia is screwed in the long run. Islamic civil war or Stalin style dictatorship. No wonder so many Russians have been leaving.
Interesting theory. If Litveninko was trying to hide his Islamic ties, why the death bed conversion ? It only weakens his credibility. He may have simply been making one last statement. One last slap to Putin's face. Yes I know the pro-Putin theory is that he waited until the end when the effect would not be great, but doing the conversion when the whole world was watching him die, gave it as great an effect as it ever could have.
The last minute conversion to me indicated mental instability and enforces the suicide theory.
It would be the first time in the history of the world that anyone committed suicide with Polonium. Possible, but not probable.
Bump
Interesting, eh? I thought the main stream media would cover this up, but I heard it on CBS (I think) this evening.
They get a free cell phone.
If the polonium was intended for use in a suitcase nuke, how was Litvinenko poisoned? Might the polonium have been in the form of dust, that he inhaled accidentally?
He lived a hellish life and now his last wish is confirmed: an eternity of hell.
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